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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26386447">Bound by Fate</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness'>Cornerofmadness</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Ties that Bind [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Prodigal Son (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Dark, Dissection, Gen, Harm to Children, Medical Procedures, Medical Torture, Serial Killers, Whump</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:16:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,498</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26386447</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gil had been expecting a weekend in the country with friends. What he gets will change his life forever.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Ties that Bind [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2002873</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Bound by Fate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmoore/gifts">darkmoore</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Disclaimer:</b> Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it</p><p> </p><p><b>Notes:</b> Written for darkmoore in comment_fic for the prompt Prodigal son, Martin Whitley was caught not because Malcom told on him, but because he almost succeeded in killing Malcom as a child.</p><p>Also the dissection tag was added per a request. There technically is no dissection but rather what might be construed as that is actually the also tagged medical procedures namely a Laryngectomy and Carotid Endarterectomy but I realize not everyone makes that distinction so warning there are graphic medical details.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gil fought to settle his breathing as the helicopter rocketed away from the forest. He could never have imagined this night, not even on his darkest days. He’d gone north to visit friends for the weekend, Vivian and her wife, Allie. Viv had been a cop with him for a while in the city before deciding the country life was for her. Suddenly it was all hands-on deck after getting a call from some campers about a child being chased in the woods. Viv’s boss deputized him to help so far away from his normal beat, from things he understood.</p><p>Gil had never been a woodsman, though he’d gone camping in the past with Vivian and Allie. Stalking someone in the forest couldn’t be more alien to him but, if the campers were right, there was a child in danger. Gil found himself mumbling to Saint Nicolas, patron saint of children, and the archangel Michael to keep the kid safe. Funny how his childhood Catholicism popped out in the weirdest of times even though he no longer considered himself particularly religious. </p><p>Maybe they heard because something alerted Gil; the sound of an odd whimpering noise was seared into Gil’s brain, probably for life. Not thinking it was an animal sound, he’d jogged best he could in the dark. Even the strong beam of his mag-lite hadn’t been a particularly wide cone of illumination. Roots and rocks threatened to do him bodily harm as he tried to get though the narrow path and suddenly there they were: a child on the ground, and a man kneeling next to him with a doctor’s bag at his side. The metallic scent of blood in the air.</p><p>Gil moved on instinct, drawing his gun as he charged forward. The bastard scooped up the boy, using him as a shield. Undeterred, Gil reholstered because he had no clean shot, and he took the man on hand to hand: Hand to scalpel as it turned out. The burning pain up his left arm and across his chest reminded him of that. He’d see the vicious, feral sneer that sliced across the man’s bearded face in his nightmares. Gil had no doubts of that.  </p><p>People had no idea how hard it could be to unarm a man with a knife. The attacker, however, wasn’t a brawler. Gil’s fist caught him in the nose, sending blood spurting everywhere. His next vicious swing slammed the man’s head back, dropping him. Both the child and his attacker went down into the fallen leaves and pine needles. Gil zip tied both the man’s hands and ankles because he had no idea how far away back up was.</p><p>He gave his general location and then tried to check on the boy who lay in a crumpled heap. Under the light of the flashlight, Gil swallowed a scream. What had the bastard done? The boy’s throat had been opened, not cut per se but literally opened as if it were a surgery. Black thread wound around some little vessels, tying them off. A plastic loop had been used to encompass a large bluish vessel tugging it to the side. Dear God, was that the kid’s Jugular? It had to be because the pinkish Y-ed vessel under it throbbed like the beat of a hummingbird’s wing. That had to be the carotid. Somehow the kid’s attacker hadn’t cut it. No, it was like he had isolated it and had been watching it when Gil had found him. Thoughts about a killer whose victims resembled surgery tumbled through Gil’s mind.</p><p>The child’s blue eyes were opened wide, fear blazing in them. He made horrible whimpering noises, blood bubbling through a hole in a large slick whitish thing that had to be his voice box if Gil’s first aid training, which raced through his mind, was giving him the correct information. Nothing in first aid had prepared him for this and he’d seen pretty horrific stuff with car accidents. Little white blood-slicked rings circled a tubular structure in his throat before it disappeared down into the muscle that hadn’t been sliced open.</p><p>Gil screamed into his walkie talkie for them to hurry it up, that they would need life flight, and then he tried to push the flaps of flesh back over the gaping wounds. “It’ll be okay. You just hold on for me. My name’s Gil, and I’m going to take care of you. Just stay with me.”</p><p>He said that last bit over and over again even as the man he’d bound taunted him with the fact that the child was drowning in his blood. Gil had resisted knocking him back out. He didn’t want to leave the boy’s side, and the little victim curled his fingers into Gil’s. Help came, and the boy wouldn’t let Gil’s hand go, leaving him on the life flight helicopter, still bleeding himself but his were only flesh wounds.</p><p>“Did you see his face?” One of the life flight nurses asked her companion as he got an IV into the boy’s arm. “Do you know who that was?”</p><p>Gil had seen who it was when they took him away: Dr. Martin Whitly. He knew the man. Whitly had pulled a bullet out of Gil’s partner the year before after a drug bust gone wrong. Saved his life. How could he be in the woods killing a child? Before Gil had been loaded up Vivian said they had found another man stabbed, rambling about a child who had stuck him in the gut along with a lot of nonsense about God’s work. Nothing about this night could be God’s work.</p><p>Gil ignored the EMS workers as they talked about Whitly but thought he might have to tell them to stop because every time they mentioned his name, the boy squeezed his hand harder. God, why wouldn’t he pass out? How much pain for such a little body? </p><p>“Okay, Malcolm, I’m going to do something a little scary but you’ll breathe easier,” the nurse said.</p><p>“Malcolm?” Gil asked.</p><p>“I’ve seen him at hospital awards dinners. This is Dr. Whitly’s boy, Malcolm.” Her eyes were wide at the implication. Gil fought back the urge to curse. Whitly had done this to his own <i>son</i>! What kind of monster was he? Gil suspected he was going to hate the answer.  “I’m going to give you something to make you sleepy, okay, Malcolm?”</p><p>The boy made panicked noises, blood burbling in his throat. </p><p>“He had to have been sedated earlier,” Gil said. “For this to have happened. I think…” He gazed into Malcolm’s eyes. Could the boy get more frightened? “I think that his father is The Surgeon. Isn’t this a lot like things he’s done? He uses ketamine if I’m remembering right.” Gil only knew what he read and heard from the detectives at the cop bars. He wasn’t one of them, not yet, but he knew The Surgeon gained his moniker by using surgical experimentation as a method of killing.</p><p>“And I have to give him a little more. It won’t hurt,” she said softly to Malcolm as she inserted a needle into the IV. Within moments his eyes fluttered, and his grip slackened. “Just stay where you are Officer Arroyo. We’ll work around you. I only gave him a very light dose so he doesn’t fight us.” She sprayed something into Malcolm’s mouth and throat, and her companion gave her a wicked-looking scythe-like tool. She got it down his throat, and they fed a tube into him to help him breathe.</p><p>“His pulse is still thready,” her companion said. “We need to get his pressure up.”</p><p>“Anything I can do?” Gil hated this helpless feeling.</p><p>“Hold his hand and let him know he’s not alone. We’ll take care of the rest.”</p><p>Gil stared at the blood-soaked gauze they had packed his neck with. Would it be enough?</p><p>XXX</p><p>Gil had been stitched up, had gone home to rest but hadn’t gotten much. All he could see were those terrified blue eyes. The next day he learned from the detectives in charge that Whitly had indeed been The Surgeon, and one of the detectives in particular, Shannon, had been pissed that Gil had been the one to capture the serial killer. That it had been pure chance had incensed the man to no end, and he’d made the interview with Gil a waking nightmare. The other man who’d been stabbed was another killer, if Whitly was to be believed. Both men seemed insane. Shannon had spat nails over that, seeing an insanity defense on the horizon as Whitly’s high-powered attorney, Sterling, had already been making noises that a man who would do what had been done to ten-year-old Malcolm Whitly had to be insane. Gil wasn’t sure he disagreed.</p><p>At the end of the day, Martin Whitly was incarcerated at Rikers, hopefully forever. Why he had done this to his child, Martin hadn’t said a word, more interested in taking down his partner, John Watkins, before Watkins could do the same to him. Gil tried to put it out of mind but couldn’t, not entirely. Restless, he knew what he needed to do.</p><p>Seeing a police guard on the door at the hospital didn’t surprise him. Gil talked to the officers, one of whom knew him. She went into the hospital room and came back out with a striking woman with somewhat disheveled clothing and red eyes. He’d seen her leaving the precinct when he arrived for his interview and realized now this had to be Mrs. Whitly. He doubted Shannon and the Surgeon task force were finished interrogating her but he hoped that they weren’t being too horrible to her because he refused to believe the grief he saw in her eyes was faked. </p><p>“This is Mrs. Whitly,” the officer said. </p><p>“I’m-”</p><p>“Gil Arroyo,” she said. “I saw you on the news. My son has been asking for you.” Her voice shook, exhausted.</p><p>Gil widened his eyes. “He’s talking?”</p><p>She shook her head, her long brown hair waving over her shoulder. “He may never speak again. The doctors tell me to be hopeful but Martin…that <i>monster</i> severed our son’s voice box. They’re not sure it’ll heal.”</p><p>“I am so sorry, Mrs. Whitly.”</p><p>She reached out and took his hand giving it a squeeze. “You found my son. You stopped Martin, and you saved Malcolm’s life.”</p><p>“The life flight team did most of that work,” he protested but she cut him off with a slash of her hand.</p><p>“You’re a hero. You’re <i>his</i> hero. Come inside.”</p><p>Mrs. Whitly retreated into the private room. Malcolm looked lost in the bed under a couple heavy blankets, the colorful one had to have come from home. Tubes ran everywhere but the horrible one down his throat had been removed. The heart monitor beeped and chirped, and the boy seemed asleep. Mrs. Whitly picked up a little dry erase board and showed it to him. Only one word was on it in a shaky hand. <i>Gil</i></p><p>His eyes misted up, and he rubbed at them.</p><p>“He can’t speak but he can write. He wanted you here. I was going to ask them to tell you when I was at the station but they rattled me so much….” She shook her head. “How can they think I knew?”</p><p>“They have to ask, and I know they didn’t make it easy. By the time I left, I was half convinced they thought I was in on it. Don’t worry about the detectives, Mrs. Whitly. Just answer honestly and save the worry for him.” Gil gestured to the bed.</p><p>“I have my daughter with our au pair. I can’t have her see this. She’s too young.”</p><p>Gil nodded. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to see if he was doing okay.”</p><p>“I appreciate it,” she said as Malcolm made a soft sound. Mrs. Whitly sat at his side, running a hand over his head. Those blue eyes were still so afraid. “Look who’s here, baby. Gil came to see how you were.”</p><p>Malcolm tried to turn his head, his face squinching up in pain. Gil moved so the boy could see him more clearly. Thick bandages encompassed his neck. Gil didn’t even want to know what might lie under them now. He put a hand on Malcolm’s arm. </p><p>“Hello, Malcolm. I just wanted to see you again.”</p><p>Malcolm scrabbled for Gil’s hand. Gil took his hand, and Mrs. Whitly got up and pushed a chair to the edge of the bed. “Have a seat, Gil. Stay for a while. I can get the nurses to bring you something if you want coffee or tea.”</p><p>Gil had learned how wealthy the family was when he’d been interviewed. He didn’t doubt that kind of money would get perks like nurses acting as waitresses. “I’m fine. I won’t stay long. I don’t want to tire him out.”</p><p>Malcolm groaned, his grip on Gil’s hand tightening. </p><p>“I don’t think he wants you to go. He’s terrified,” she said.</p><p>“I’m sure. I can stay for a while. I have today off, and I brought you something.” Gil slipped out of Malcolm’s grip. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a battered sock monkey. He set it in the bed next to Malcolm. “I know you’re probably a little old for stuffed toys but that’s a special monkey. His name is Bayani, and my mother made him for me when I a little boy. He watched over me for years, and I thought rather than sitting around in a box in the attic, he could stand guard for you. That’s what his name means, it’s Filipino for warrior.”</p><p>Malcolm pulled Bayani against him. Gil grinned. </p><p>“I glad you like him.”</p><p>“I can’t let him keep a family keepsake,” Mrs. Whitly said.</p><p>Gil waved her off. “Seriously, Bayani has been in Mom’s attic for years. I want him to have it. When he no longer needs Bayani, Malcolm can always give him back.”</p><p>She smiled softly. “It sounds like you are planning to stay around a while.”</p><p>“As much as you need me to. If I’m in the way, I’ll go.”</p><p>Mrs. Whitly studied her son who clung to the sock monkey. “He looks more relaxed since you arrived. I want you to stay as much as you are able so long as it calms him down.”</p><p>“Well, Malcolm, I have a job that is pretty demanding but when I can be here, I will. How does that sound?” Gil asked.</p><p>Somehow, in spite of it all, Malcolm smiled. Mrs. Whitly tucked him in with Bayani. Gil stayed until the boy fell back asleep. He gave Mrs. Whitly his card and told her to call any time she or Malcolm needed him. He knew she would call and soon. That was fine with him. If he could help, Gil would. He never felt more needed in his life.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30564755">[Podfic] Bound by Fate</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Static_Whisper/pseuds/Static_Whisper">Static_Whisper</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
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